


the stars can not contain us (so we spill out onto the streets)

by nebualism



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: And Stupid parents afraid of admiting they love each other, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Jason Todd is Stray, M/M, Stupid boys falling in love (again), no proof reading because we die like mne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-06-24 02:34:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19714546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebualism/pseuds/nebualism
Summary: Or, it's fate for a bat and a cat to fall in love. Doesn't mean it always work out.





	the stars can not contain us (so we spill out onto the streets)

**Author's Note:**

> A drabble for the prompt, Perspectives. I took a lot of liberties with this one as per usual. There's some important plot point I just couldn't fit in no matter how hard I tried but Jason does go after the joker in this one, after a heist where the joker captures Selina. He doesn't make it out alive but just like in canon he does later come back to life. Harley finds him wandering the streets, returns him to Selina and that's that. Also Jason does leave a year or two after that when he feels that Gotham has become sort of his cage. Selina offers him a place to stay in Europe, he leaves and then comes back, right where this fic starts off.

Selina’s thirty seven and her son _comes home_. 

She thinks of crying, sobbing, of falling to her knees like she sees on the shows, but instead her hand shakes when she cups Jason cheeks, there is no more teenage acne, his scars are healed, his skin tanned, he is a man, in all senses of the word but in her head. _I miss you,_ she thinks of saying, _Christ, please, hijo don’t do that again_.

Instead her son shakes in her arms and she tries to slow down her heart instead focusing on running her fingers through his curls. She lets out a wet sniffle, and Jason - bless his soul says nothing. Instead, he huffs, wrap his arms around her and hugs her. He’s solid, stronger, then when she had last seen him. She rests her forehead on his shoulder and inhales the way Gotham scent lingers on his skin and says, “Oh. My brooding little kitty. What shall I do with you?”

He has been alive for two years now and yet, only two months had been spent with her. 

“Come inside,” She breathes, untangling herself from her _son_ , her dead- back alive- _son,_ and he drops his arms to the side, and she blinks back her tears, ignoring her pounding head and slides out of her doorway into her home. She looks at her son, the grown man across from her, and tries to find her Jason in his reflection. 

“How was Paris?” She says and Jason shuffles around the door, like she expects _her_ to kick him out, and it’s her turn to huff, smack his arm. “Come inside.” She demands this time. “Come inside, and tell me about Paris.”

“Tell me of the food.” She starts, and he does. He tells her of the sandwiches he ate, and the weird fries he munched on, and the soda that fizzled out before he even got it. He goes on and she makes him tea, grey with a hint of honey and for herself she pours white wine. She sits on one of the dining chairs, pulls a sit next to her, sits the tea down beside her. It's an open invitation. From beneath her, Zita meows, curls around her feet, and doesn’t stop. She sits, and she listens, her wine is almost finished and she doesn’t trust her fingers enough to reach forward and refilled her glass. 

They talk from what seems like hours, and he tells her of all the books he had read, all the movies he had watched, all the people he meet, he doesn't tell her of there other world, of what jobs he had taken, of what thievery he had partaken in. Instead they let that information live in the silence that exist between them. Selina doesn't push it, she understands, she know's what it means to be lost, wondering idly for the meaning.

She yawns and Jason smiles, says, “Is that the bedtime I hear?,” and she smacks the back of his shoulders, and it’s just like old times, when Jason had been young enough that his feet did not reach the floor. The thought enough makes her heart ache when he laughs, deeper in tone however still the same. She has her son back, she breathes, she has him back.

"Cat's don't sleep they nap," she reminds him, and sits back on the chair, "And beside the story isn't done, you have yet to tell me what happened to your neighbors."

_(And he does, until she finds herself curled inside of her dining chair, fast asleep.)_

She would be a fool to believe life would return silently like she wanted it too. The first morning When she wakes, stumbling upon herself, she thinks of the merits of dreams. She wonders how lifelike they have to be for her to go ahead before she declares herself clinically insane. She wonders what Bruce will make of it. He wouldn’t laugh in her face, instead, he would do that face where his eyebrows meet together, and his lips grow thin. 

_(It makes you look older, she would say, swatting at his shoulder, and his lips would twitch. Aren’t I? He would respond.)_

She shakes her head, rid herself of thoughts of him, and stretches. She remembers falling asleep on the dinning chair, and when she looks around at the empty cup of wine and the tea mug, she decides that this might have been her realist hallucination yet.

It isn’t till the sound of keys in her door, does the thought that perhaps this wasn’t a hallucination, and perhaps her son is really back home crosses her mind. Her body tenses, her feet ready to flee, when she hears a familiar voice telling Zita to stay put, for shit shakes. This time she doesn’t hold back the laughter that escapes her lips. He stands in front of the door, groceries in hand, and she wants to tell him it's time for a haircut, by the way the white locks fall into his eyes and that he needs more meat on his bones.

 _“_ You always have a home here.” She reminds him, he nods, and goes to the kitchen beside her, unpacking. She sniffs, ignores the way Zita rubs against her legs in hopes for treats and stares at the egg, the carton of pancake mix and everything else laid down beside her. She remembers when he was young, when Bruce would take him to the manor when she went away, how when she went to pick him up, she would smile and he would tell her of the new recipes Alfred had taught him. “Now I’m going to go take a shower. And by the time I come back hopefully the eggs and pancakes will be done.”

_(They were. And like Old Times, she had ushered him to the TV, had watched cartoons and ate in a comfortable since of silence and laughter.)_

He stays the next night, then the next week,another after that and Selina stops finding herself sitting outside of his room, fingers on the doorknob, scared that if she opens the door, he will disappear just as suddenly as he came. She never says it, and if he notices, he doesn’t comment on it. 

They fall into a routine, he cooks breakfast, she cooks dinner, she pretends she doesn’t see him preparing for a heist and she goes back into her job. There not hero’s that she knows, she has walked the grey line far to much to be considered anything but. 

Sometimes though she thinks being Cat woman saved her soul. She won’t say it, but the words are there, always present in her actions. Sometimes, she runs her hands over the spandex when things grow too quiet. Sometimes, she stops and put it on. Stands in the mirror, and stares. There are grooves in the latex to where she had still been a child, some she had amassed when Jason still went by Catlad, some she had amassed when he had died and some she had amassed at her own pitiful negligence.

And yet, she can’t get a new costume. She upgrades it when she wants, or when Bruce titlages her about her safety. Most times, she sticks to what she already has, rolls her eyes when Bruce nags her and tells him, _it’s impossible if she never gets caught isn’t it._ He huffs, and she smiles. And for the most part they continue on.

Their where times when she had used to teases him when they were younger, sneak into the manor, make him chase her. He never caught her unless she wanted to be. Bruce had known that; it had driven him mad and she had loved it. It had become a game that she had grown out of as she had grown older. Today though she has plans, a visit to Ivy, who had returned to Arkham after a botch plan that involved civilians and Gotham's City Park.

Sneaking into Arkham is never hard, it's a worn down prison who's mainly enforcing keeping the people inside, inside. But she finds that she's to tired to spend her hours running across the quarters, so instead, for the first time in a long time, Selina finds herself bribing one of the guards for a visit. He's the talkative type, talks to her about Gotham and the state of the city, and she tries her hardest not to smash his head through one of the walls. She had only ever meet one man so intuitive to talking about Gotham days on end.

“That’s a little worn down isn’t it?” Ivy says, pointing to her costume. And Selina snorts over her tea. She’s here mainly because she hasn’t seen Ivy in weeks, and her heart aches for her friend. Their happy, she reminds herself, her and Harley. She - herself is happy, she thinks, and inside Ivy cell, filled with plants, and Ivy’s persistent way of nagging, she thinks she’s starting to believe it.

"Worn down and History is two different things.” 

And Ivy shrugs, and from somewhere around her, a plant curls around Ivy arms, takes the cup from her grip. She's always been a show-off, and Ivy stares at her, seemingly disinterested and interested at the same time. She had thought of ridding herself of the suit, had even taken the precaution of drawing up a new design after her son had died, everything had become a memory, everything had become a grave stone. “They look the same.”

And Selina raises an eyebrow, in the way the cops used too when they found her bag full of stolen goods, Bruce when she tries to pull one over on him, Jason when she warns him about the Bats - “Don’t you love one of them, boss?” he says and she snorts, ruffles his curls and she knows he would pull away if it weren’t for Bastet sleeping on his chest. “Loves a children's game, Kitten.” She replies and Jason nods, like the words she spills are the truth. 

“Do they?” She questions. And Ivy shrugs. Seemingly done with the conversation and for safety, clarity and curiosity, Selina pushes her cup aside and asks, “How’s Harley?”

"God, She's- she's Harley." That's all Ivy says but Selina can hear the love in her voice, the heartache, the feeling of not being alone, despite being locked up. It's the feeling in her gut that tells her Ivy will not be staying here for long if Harley has anything to do with the missing Arkham Guards that used to litter the prison. "But how's you and the Bat? I heard a familiar face came home."

Selina frowns, and says, "Stray?"

Ivy takes a sip of her tea, raises an eyebrow, and goes, "Is that what he's calling himself now?" She nods, Ivy laughs and tilts back in her seat, there's memories of Jason she knows Ivy has, how easy he had made Ivy laugh, Ivy coming to the funeral, her head bowed, even Harley wiping the tears off her face. "How is he?"

"He's-" She's silent, not knowing how much is her own to say, she became a mother to a boy who had stolen the tires off of Bruce's car, for money he had desperately needed, a boy who would die to the Joker's hand, come back alive to his ex's girlfriends and return more bloody and broken then ever. She sighs, winks and says, "He's coping."

"That's to be expected, you know." Ivy hums, and Selina checks her watch, she doesn't have much more time before the guard comes and gets her. "You and Bat?"

"What about me and him?"

Ivy laughs when she looks up, catches Selina staring at her through the googles, shakes her head and goes back to sipping her tea. 

_(They talk for the rest of the time, talk about nothing at all, new people that popped up, how long they thought they last, how little time they had. The new ones, the ones that came with the flashy suits, and the cocky attitude, who relied more on there words and look, then skill, they were always the first to go.)_

A week after her visit with Ivy she hears screaming from his room. It is not unusual but most nights it's hoarse, and soft, and she stands by him, till he stops, brushes his hair, and they talk, and he tells her about stuff that evades the questions she wants to ask. He tells her about hot summers in Mexico, he tells her about drinking contest, (and she scoffs, and ask whether he’s old enough to drink.), he tells her of funny traditions and everything else.

“Have you ever had Cocadas?” He says one night, and she sits beside him in the bed, watching Azazel circle around Jason’s foot. It’s an unconscious thing, she thinks when he moves to scratch him behind his ears, Azazel purrs, seemingly content with given attention. He curls around their feet, he’s content, closing his eyes while they talk, till he closes his eyes and moves to sleep. And she leaves as silent as she has come, returning back to her own room. In the morning, she wakes to him sitting on the couch watching the news, he looks up from his own bowl of cereal, smiles and says, "Morning, Mom", In the end she breathes out and returns to pandering around the kitchen for own bowl of cereal.

Other times, it's too silent and she kids herself into thinking it’s a dream, that she’ll wake up tomorrow, and the grave is put back just as it always is, and she is stuck mourning a son that should have never died. It's the silence that scares her, never the screaming. Tonight, though, she sits awake. Planning, she has a job to do. There’s a group of girls, drug trafficking outside the border, she's to deep in the map that she doesn't hear her door opening.

“I saw Dick today.” He says, opening the door to his room. She huffs, peers from the maps she’s looking at and winks. He groans, and she laughs when he adds, “Not in that way.”

She wants to ask him how's he's feeling, because she knows about him and Dick, knows the way they had tangled into each other, how many times they had tried, she could see tragic love, she had lived it once. Instead, she pulls aside one of her dining room chairs, and waits till he flops beside her. He smells of motor grease, of crime alley, of it’s nooks and crannies. He looks over her work and she lets him. They sit in silence, staring over Selina's notes. She's not a detective, not anywhere close but East End is her home. These are her people, these are her girls, her kittens.

“He asked about Paris.” He says suddenly. And Selina frowns, while Jason continues. "I told him, I went to visit. For a job."

She sighs, But she gets it, because for as much as Gotham is her _home_ and as much as she owes Gotham everything she is, it still remains her prison. And the only way to escape prison with your head on right is by tearing it apart, leaving nothing of yourself in it's wake, even it's most integral parts. She rests her head on his shoulder, and says, "You wanted to call him, didn't you?"

Jason says nothing, and she gets it.

“Bats are inevitable.” She tells him. It means to come out like a joke, like it always does, but Jason nods, grimly and she tilts her head back and sighs.Jason doesn’t laughs, just snorts and leans back on the chair. “It’s not Gotham, if there’s not a bat breathing down your neck.”

"I miss Paris." Jason says and Selina smiles, and tries not to act like she can't hear the words he can't say. He misses Dick, that she knows, she see's them sometimes when she's patrolling East End. See's the way Nightwing, had so suddenly became interested in Gotham, how Stray finds himself partnered up with his patrols. She's quiet, when she see's them always smiles then leaves. 

“What can I do?” Jason asks, and she stares, lost in memories of Bruce and Selina, then Batman and Cat woman, and when she glances back in Jason’s face she pretends she could not see her own in his reflection.

“It’s simple. You heal.” And Jason stares at her, and when she smiles, it feels sad, feeble, she thinks absentmindedly, she brushes her fingers against Royalties fur and she thinks of Bruce when she adds,“And when you're both ready, you try again.”

_(She doesn't mention that sometimes ready doesn't come for a long time.)_

It turns out she’s right about Bat's being inevitable, not that she fakes surprise when she hears a certain flap of fabric from her window. It’s without warning and Selina looks up lazily from her seat near her vanity. She had been reading, before Raphael had decided to sleep beside her. By then the book, had been forgotten and she had been resting with her eyes open. It's been three months since her son came home. Three since she's allowed to heal with him.

“I caught Stray ending a mugging” Bruce says. Her body aches from the last heist, from the diamond hidden underneath her bed. What she wants, so desperately is to sleep. And yet, her body sings for Bruce, in ways it has for years. So she stretches, and unclasps the necklace and tells herself that childish wants rarely gets answered. "

"Did you?” She asks, she stares at Bruce through the mirror, picks apart the man's laugh lines, crow feet under his eyes, his cowl abandoned, and she loves him for it. She loves him for aging gracefully with her, even in the moments where it had seemed the end. But there's fault in Bruce that hasn't changed, and she knows the man is scared, and smirks and says, “Perhaps the conversation would be better with him, you know.”

“Perhaps.” Bruce agrees, and her lips twitch. She sets her jewelry on the side, goes back to unzipping the rest of her boots and ignores the way her body shakes when she almost halfway done. She knows Bruce had loved Jason, still in his own way loves Jason. He was my son, Bruce had told her once, I may have not adopted him but he was my son. “But he evades my questions.” 

“Are you asking me if that is expected?” She glances up at his reflection in the mirror. His face is stony, and she wants to carve emotion back into it, one by one. Instead, she clasps her fingers together, and toys with taking off her goggles. She likes the wall it gives her, if she takes it off she would be raw, her expressions evident on her face, and she would hate it.“This is my first time knowing someone back from the dead, I should be asking _you_.”

“You should.” 

There quiet for a moment. And she hates it. Hates the stifling of the silence. Instead, she sits by the vanity, waiting patiently, for the words Bruce struggles to get out. “Do you-” he starts, then stops. “Are you sure this is you're Jason?”

“I believe it is him.” She says suddenly, because she does. Fully, and that makes her heart ache, more than anything. They do this each time, he comes back, each time he returns to Gotham, to his family and she know's he's protecting himself but her fuse is cut short, and she needs Bruce to take the step. She is not the same girl she was when she had meet Bruce, and he hopes he gets it, when she presses her lips together and says. “I do.”

“And if it is not?”

Selina shrugs and closes her eyes. “Then it isn’t. And then I am a fool, _Handsome_ and you are right.”

Bruce snorts, and from the middle of her room, her bed creaks with the new found weight. “That's the first time you ever said that.” 

“And the last.” 

“I wouldn't bet on that.” 

And they stare at each other, Selina tries to remember if he was always this stiff, always this brick wall she had went running through in her own wicked way. His lips quirk when she Selina sits forward, and Raphael angry at the movement, hisses. Her voice is soft, uncharacteristically so but Bruce has always made her softer when she questions,"Why are you afraid of this truly being Jason?" 

_(Bruce doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t waste her energy to turn around and watch him leave.)_

It returns back to normal, Selina returns back to the streets, becomes Cat woman, takes Jobs, leaves behind clean glass and missing diamonds in her wake. She even keeps a few items, mementos, she thinks, of small moments she can't quite comprehend. Stuff that reminds her of her sister before her eyes had gone glassy, and how she rarely woke to even speak Selina's name, Jason when he had been younger, bringing home books from the library, stacking them high on the shelves the cat's can't get too, because it would have been horrific, he had told her, to bring back a ruined book. She even picks up a small ivory bat. Pure White. And she stares at it, before tucking it back with the others.

_(Jason says nothing about her new found collection, just whistles when he walks inside, hugs her and says, he's going out to see a movie with Dick.)_

“Why did you come back?” She says, one morning, their sitting eating ice cream in their costume too lazy to go back to pajamas. Outside, the sun beams down on Gotham’s prize buildings ripping them into sheds. When she had been younger, she had wished to fly. Now, she remains cautious, learning that all the good stuff remains on the ground. “Not that I'm not happy to see you, Kitten."

“There are children in the city who need my protection,” Jason reminds her, and she blinks, thinks of when she had first put on her suit, _‘there are girls who need my protection’_ she said, voice soft, everything about her, impeccable soft. She was young and in her mind, she was invincible. "I can't just- I can't just leave them to fend for themselves."

Like I did, goes unsaid.

She stops mixing her ice-cream into mush, and stares at him. The Joker might have succeeded in killing him but he’s still her, still alive and breathing and she shakes her head, ruffles his hair, and ignores the way his cheeks flush with heat. “You truly are my kitten, ”

_(And they return back to the show. Jason's eyes darting to his phone and Selina's to the ivory bat in the corner.)_

She spends the rest of the week ignoring the bat. It isn’t easy, and she sets her eyes on many things. There’s a shipment of pearls, that when she closes her eyes, she imagines draped around her neck. She has one already, but she can't stay in the house any longer, and darting the streets had gone old. What she needs is an adventure, the promise of a reward and the thrill of danger. It’s not a heist of a lifetime, she thinks she’s done with those now, nothing she finds is enough to make her hands itch. It’s something small but meaningful, something that has worth, just not in the end of the day to her.

So she doesn't feign surprise when Bruce appears without a Robin toe this time, and she laughs, drapes one of the pearls on her neck and ignores the way Bruce gives her a warning look through the cowl. It's much like old times, too much like old times, but she's forever lost to the past and when she runs his hands over his chest, and says, "Must you always catch me, Bat."

And Bruce lips twitch in a way that makes her heart race, she no longer finds herself grounded in the present, losing herself to the passage of time. "Must you always _steal,_ Cat."

"I do no such thing."

And Bruce raises an eyebrow, and lost in the bombarding memories, she kisses him, softly this time, a memory of the past, she reminds herself. But the way her chest aches, the way it tightens, the way her fingers grip onto the plates of his suit, remains instilled in the present. She misses him, she never stopped, she never wanted to miss him, and yet, she pushes herself off of him, sneaks the pearls in her pouch, and says, “The only thing I ever wanted to steal was your heart.”

_(And when Bruce turns, She swings her legs over the window, and leaps back into the present.)_

Their eating dinner, sitting on the thick purple shag rug, Jason had bought her as a gift, years ago. It’s a shitty calzone from the pizza place downstairs, where there’s more grease than actual meat inside, but it’s her _store_ , the only one that sells to Cat woman happily when she stopped a burglary. The one that used to ruffle Jason’s hair when he was younger and he had answered to Cat lad instead of Stray.

“Did you love him,” Jason asks suddenly, and she hums to deep into the show when he repeats it. She thinks of playing dumb but Jason is far to old for her tricks. 

Back in time she would say, _‘Who’_ and he would frown, and accuse her of playing dumb, and she would feign surprise, smack her lips together and say, _‘me?’_ and somewhere between there laughter, the question would die, and Selina would smile, fully this time. But she stares at the man across the table from her, the wide shoulders, the misplaced height, even the 5 o’clock shadow that begins to grow even though she knows she saw him shave before they left. 

“Bruce?” She murmurs and Jason nods. She’s silent, for a moment then two, before she swallows. She doesn’t know love, she wants to say, and neither did he. She stares at the boy in front of her, the one with a blinking resemblance and she stirs her pasta around. “Of course I did.”

“Do you still do?” Jason’s asks, he’s fidgeting, and she snorts, and thinks how all these conversations just so happens over a plate of food.

"Love's a child game."

_(Her heart wrenches, and this time she doesn’t know who for.)_

Never let it be said, that Catwoman was an eavesdropper. For the most part, she pretends that she doesn’t see Dick coming and going from the apartment, and for the most part, they pretend its a secret. And it makes her want to giggle, because for all the years they’ve been doing this, memories remanscient of Robin and Catlad, they were always bad at hiding. But she has her keys in the door, and her feet aches, all she wants to do tonight is to pull her heels off, run a bath, indulge in the leftover pizza and watch what remains of her show. but something tells her to be quiet, when she walks down the hallway.

“Are you okay?” Dick’s saying, his voice is soft, and from what Selina could see through the small crack Jason's room door that Dick and Jason is sitting on the bed, and everything about this moment is raw. She knows those moments, and yet her feet stay platted to the ground. “Everytime you go to sleep, you wake up sweating and screaming, and Jason-”

“It’s none of your business Dick.”

And she could see Dick running his hand through his hair, it’s grown longer, she thinks, but it has been months seen Jason has returned. She lifts her foot to keep moving when she hears the worry, the utter love in his voice when he says, “I care. Jason. Please. let me be there.”

She knows what it means to love a Bat. And she peeks through a crack in the door, and she sees the care, the danger in her son's eyes. The battle that exists between them as Jason holds himself close, forever closed off and Dick- arms open, eyes wide. She also knows what it means to love a Stray. 

“No.” 

“Mom,” Jason greets, he’s staring at her from outside the door, ears pink and she feigns a smile, pretending she doesn’t notice the way Dick suddenly becomes interested in Jason’s unraveling wonder woman sheets. She remembers getting them for him, when Bruce had taken him to a Justice League meeting and he had come back to her, jumping, laughing, young and living.

"Selina.” Dick smiles, a greeting and it's a sad smile, one that looks so out of place on the forner robins face, and it made her chest ache.

She swallows, walks over, nods at Dick and runs her fingers through Jason's curls, and smiles, “Kitten.”

_(She pretends that she doesn’t notice him and Jason holding hands. She pretends she can’t feel the hope bloom. Jason has Dick she summarizes, he has someone. He will be fine.)_

Selina’s thirty seven and she thinks she has love figured out.

Well, no, she knows that’s a lie.

“Him and Dick are good together” She says, and Bruce nods, hums, and she leans his weight on him. There sitting outside of Gotham. People-Watching, Jason would call it, but there's no people outside tonight, and when she looks at Bruce, he looks back at her with this passion she can't understand, so instead she finds herself, building watching, quietly watching the sun rise. "Do you remember when Bane broke your back?"

It’s not a question but Bruce turns, and she remembers that there are scars running down his chest, times where bullets niche through his armor, times where her own claws went in too deep. He frowns, where a normal man would wince, and says, “I do.”

“Hm.” He raises an eyebrow and she does not answer him. Her mind is forever elsewhere. Forever lost. She hates it and loves it at the same time. She snorts, gets up and rests her hand on the banister of his balcony. “Eventually we will retire you know.”

“Will we?”

And Selina smirks, and glances back at the man that is lounging so peacefully on his bed. “Yes. You will retire first. Old age, of course while I young and graceful continue on.” 

And he stares at her, through his cowl, and she thinks of the times where she could never tell what he was thinking, when they were young _. Foolish._ She reprimands herself. _Young and Foolish._ But even now, looking into the white of his lenses, she feels young, she feels twenty one and so utterly in love. She feels twenty one and powerful.

“I love you.” Bruce says, and Selina presses her lips together. She knows love. Knows how fleeting it really is and how easy it escapes her grasp. And she thinks of Bruce, her Bruce, the one that always come back to her, even in her shitty moments, and beyond. 

“Do you Bat?” She responds, suddenly finding it harder to exhale when she presses, She is not dreaming. She takes a breathe, and another, and she gets it, because she thinks of Holly, who she trusted, who at the end, she still does trust. And she thinks of all the anger Gotham had given her “Or, are we back to clinging to the past?”

"Is that so bad?" And she stares, lost in memories of Bruce and Selina, then Batman and Catwoman, and when she glances back at Bruce's cowl she pretends she could not see her own in his reflection. She had asked Bruce to leave with her once. He had frowned, said Batman was nothing without Gotham and she had frown, had responded back with seething words that Bruce Wayne was nothing without Batman either. And when she looks in his face, she can tells the answer hadn't changed.

And she sighs, stares out at the city, and thinks how stuck they are, running around each other, neither taking the step the other needs. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it, go grab some water and eat some fruits.


End file.
